Trench Reynolds: DBKP This Week in Crime - October 12-18 2008






October 12-18, 2008
Volume 32
Caylee Anthony, Tom Capano, Hans Resier, Ted Genter

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I'm Trench Reynolds.

I blog about crime.


This is DBKP's This Week in Crime for October 12-18, 2008.


I have a website called Bad Breeders which most people think is about dogs but it isn't. It's about various parenting travesties that have made their way to the media in one way or another.

Back when the story first broke I was covering incessantly about the disappearance of Caylee Anthony and the shenanigans of her mother Casey Anthony and grandmother Cindy Anthony. However when psychics and bounty hunters and the Nancy Graces of the world started getting involved it became way too much of a circus for me and I started a self-imposed embargo on Casey Anthony stories.

That was until I saw this article from CNN. It echoes what a lot of people have been saying that they can't convict Casey Anthony without a body. Personally I disagree. While it is a gamble it’s not impossible and more common that you think.

Off the top of my head I can name two cases where people were convicted without a body. The first is Tom Capano. He was a high profile attorney from Delaware who was having an affair wit the then Governor's secretary. He killed her and dumped her body of the Jersey Shore. The body of Ann Marie Fahey was never found. The second one that comes to recent memory was that of Hans Resier the famous computer file type designer who stood accused of killing his wife.. All of his supporters claimed that you can’t convict without the body of his wife Nina. After he was convicted he led police to his wife’s body.

There’s another case from New Orleans that I couldn't find a whole lot of information about but it sticks out in my memory. It that case. Ted Genter bragged that he killed a woman known only as Lydia that nobody could even prove existed. Genter was also convicted without a body after his cohort, William Morehouse, confessed. The victim turned out to be one Caryn Beth Capps.

I think the Caylee Anthony disappearance fits very well next to those other cases. The only thing that will free Casey Anthony is if Caylee shows up alive and well. I think the odds of that happening are slim and none and slim just left.


by Trench Reynolds
image: Trench Network

Trench Reynolds: DBKP This Week in Crime, vol. 30

September 21-27, 2008
Volume 30



I'm Trench Reynolds.

I blog about crime.


This is DBKP's This Week in Crime for September 21-September 27th, 2008.


Yes, I took the week off last week. That's a good thing. When I take the week off that means there wasn't anything earth-shattering to report in my world of crime. This week, unfortunately, is not the case.

As I'm sure most of you know there was a school shooting last week in Finland in which ten people were killed. It's the second school shooting Finland has had in the past year. Most blogs posted the initial crime and posted very little follow up about it. As for me I just can't let go of stories like this.

22-year-old gunman Matti Saari stormed the Kauhajoki School of Hospitality armed with a gun and incendiary devices. Saari attended the school and attacked the room where his classmates were taking a cooking exam. Sarri was supposed to have taken that exam the same day as he was studying to be a chef. Witnesses said that Saari looked like he was having 'fun' while opening fire on the unsuspecting crowd. Saari also actually phoned a friend of his to tell him that he's killed people and called to say goodbye. Saari used his incendiary devices to set fire to the classroom and to the bodies of those he shot. The victims had to be taken to Helsinki to be identified.

Saari did fire on police who did not fire back. They didn't have to. Like most school shooters Saari turned the gun on himself. He initially survived but died later at the hospital.

When the smoke cleared a chilling portrait of the shooter had been cast and as usual in these situations the red flags were many. Now I'm going to offer my sobering dose of reality that go along with many myths of school shooters.

In a note left by Saari he said that he was planning a school shooting for six years. That would mean that he was 16 and in high school when he started plotting. According to some of his high school friends he was bullied and an outcast in high school. A lot of these shooters are nothing more than copycats of the Columbine shooting. A lot of them think that the Columbine shooters, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were bullied. In my opinion they were not. In this day of instant information I have yet to see any proof that they were actually bullied. This Slate article by journalist Dave Cullen lends credence to that theory. Not to mention that is no excuse to kill 10 people that had nothing to do with his alleged bullying.

Saari was bullied while he was in the Finnish Army as well. This should come as no shock considering he was discharged from the army for firing off his weapon when he was not ordered to. That terrified the other recruits.

Saari was also a 'fan' of school shooters including the Columbine killers and Cho Seung Hui, the gunman at Virginia Tech but more on that later. When these bullying claims come out it makes me wonder if the bullying started before they became school shooting fans or after.

Also as someone who was bullied every day for 12 years I know how painful bullying can be but I never thought of taking up arms. For those of you in high school who think that it's all hopeless just bide your time. Once you reach my age you'll realize how insignificant high school was in the grand timeline of your life. Once you graduate more than likely your bullies will either end up in jail or in some dead end life.

The first thing most people did was make the comparison in similarities that happened at the Jokela School 10 moths prior. To say the similarities were eerie is a gross understatement.

Prior to the Jokela shooting gunman Pekka-Eric Auvinen posted videos on YouTube that were in a threatening manner against Jokela High School. Saari posted threatening videos as well except his did not indicate a specific target. Both were fans of other school shootings. Both had bought their guns at the same gun shop in Jokela. As it turned out these were not mere coincidences.

Saari and Auvinen were online buddies both brought together for their admiration of school shooters. Over at TheTrenchcoat Chronicles I refer to these types of people as 'mutants'. Not the X-Men kid of mutants but more like CHUDs. They played online games together. They exchanged YouTube videos of previous school shootings. They boasted about their plans to each other. To extend the six degrees of separation of school shooters even further, before his shooting spree and suicide Auvinen also had contact with Pennsylvania student Dillon Cossey. Cossy was arrested last year for plotting an attack against Plymouth-Whitemarsh High School outside of Philadelphia. While this school shooting 'network' if you will may come as a shock to some it does not come as a shock to me.

These school shooting groupies congregate online in places like LiveJournal, MySpace, and various message boards. If you go back to every shooting that has happened since Columbine I can almost guarantee that most of them, either shooters or would be shooters, were fans of Columbine. It's not just kids and teens either. The really scary part is that there are adults who were even adults when Columbine happened that are fans of the mass murderers.

So when people ask where will the next school shooter come from my answer will always be the same. They come from the darkest corners of the internet.


by Trench Reynolds
image: Trench Network

Trench Reynolds: DBKP This Week in Crime - Aug 31-Sept 6, 2008

August 31-Sept 6, 2008
Volume 29



I'm Trench Reynolds.

I blog about crime.


This is DBKP's This Week in Crime for August 31th-September 6th, 2008.


First I want to start off with an update of the story I posted about last time and that was the story of missing 5-year-old Giovanni Gonzalez. Unfortunately there's not a whole lot to update on. Giovanni was featured briefly on America's Most Wanted during Labor Day weekend and Clear Channel has donated a billboard in Lynn, Mass. asking people to call police if they have any information on him. Giovanni's father, Ernesto Gonzalez, is still in jail refusing to talk. Meanwhile the national media is still focused on the circus sideshow that is the disappearance of Caylee Anthony. Not that I don't hope that Caylee is found I just think that the media is focusing too much on the soap opera like aspects of it. Anyway if you want to be kept updated on the search for Giovanni Gonzalez you can go here.

So I have to apologize to DBKP readers. I took last weekend off because of the Labor Day weekend and speaking of Labor Day that usually marks when schools get into full swing for the new school year. With the way society is today along with the new school year has come a spate of plots to commit violence against the schools. Now some schools start their school years in August and that's how far I'm going back to bring you these plots.

18-year-old Colin McKenzie-Gude of Bethesda, Maryland had already graduated from high school. That didn't stop him from amassing a cache of weapons and explosives. Authorities also found a list of addresses of his former teachers and a map of the motorcade route that President Bush takes to Camp David. He also had forged documents that said he was a CIA agent and a U.S. contractor with protections from the Geneva Convention.

16-year-old Andrew Potts of Ardmore High School in Alabama was discovered to have been plotting an attack against his school. Potts was found to have hit lists that contained teachers and students names along with several swords and knives. Police also found Potts to be in possession of child porn in their search and Potts had been in previous trouble with the law for physically assaulting his grandmother. Potts has been charged as an adult.

Two 12-year-olds in Grand Rapids, Minnesota were arrested for planning a school shooting against Robert J. Elkington Middle School.

At Central High School 16-year-old Ryan McDonald was shot and killed by 15-year-old Jamar Siler. No motive has been released as of yet.

Not too far from me in Gastonia, NC a threat was made against Ashbrrok High School that was posted on a World of Warcraft message board. That threat turned out to be a hoax made by a juvenile from New Jersey.

18-year-old Allen Doelitsch of Boerne, Texas was arrested for plotting an attack against Samuel Champion High School, a school he didn't even attend. Doelitsch is also accused of trying to recruit a 14-year-old into his plot. He's blaming his actions on depression and the fact that his mom took him off his meds.

In Omaha, Nebraska 18-year-old Michael Tufly was arrested for threatening an attack against the Millard Learning Center which he attended. Tufly was an admitted 'fan' of Columbine and told police he was 'mad at the world'.

Am I trying to scare you into pulling your kids from school in fear that an attack is imminent at any time? No, not at all. More often than not these plots are discovered long before they ever come to fruition. The odds of a school shooting happening on the scale of Columbine or Virginia Tech are roughly the same as winning the lottery. However that doesn't mean that precautions shouldn't be taken or that parents shouldn't remain vigilant about what their children are up to. Most school shootings or plots could have been prevented if there had been just a bit more parental involvement.


by Trench Reynolds
image: Trench Network

Caylee Anthony Media Circus: Giovanni Gonzalez Gets No Attention

August 17-23, 2008
Volume 29



I'm Trench Reynolds.

I blog about crime.


This is DBKP's This Week in Crime for August 17th-August 23rd, 2008.

For the past 8 months I've pimped out my sites here at DBKP. This week I'm doing something different, original content. What a concept, I know.

There's been a story in the news lately, you may have hard about it. A small child is missing. The child's parent is in jail on child endangerment charges and refuses to give police any information. There's evidence that the child may have been severely injured or even killed.

That sounds like the case of Caylee Anthony doesn't it? But it's not. This story is about 5-year-old Giovanni Gonzalez from Massachusetts.

Giovanni's father, Ernesto Gonzalez, had his son at his home for one of his visitations. The parents are currently involved in a custody dispute. When this past Monday came Giovanni had not been returned. Ernesto Gonzalez was arrested on child endangerment charges and is being held on $500,000 bond. He has a cut on his hand that he refuses to explain. Over this past weekend a bloody mop was found in Ernesto Gonzalez's home in Lynn, Massachusetts. Police are in the process of conducting door to door searches and have roadblocks set up all over the area.

Outside of mine and a few other blogs you won't hear about this story outside of the Boston area. No bounty hunters are involved and no L.A. lawyers are being retained as spokesmen. No armies of media are parked outside Gonzalez's house. No Nancy Grace or Greta Van Sustern doing shows about Giovanni Gonzalez. No psychics volunteering their assistance.

Why do you think that is? I think you know why but not for the reasons you think. It's because Giovanni Gonzalez and his parents are Hispanic. That's all there is to it. However I don't think the media outlets are racist. For the media it's all about numbers. They're ruled by ratings or readership. It's a twisted game of supply and demand. It's the American viewers and readers that are racist. They salivate over every minute detail that comes out of the Caylee Anthony story yet when a Hispanic boy befalls a similar fate no one outside of the area even bats an eyelash.

I used to think this wasn't true but I was just kidding myself about it. Think about it, since the dawn of 24-hour news can you name a crime story that held the nation's attention where the victim wasn't white? I used to also think it was about social class and not color but Casey Anthony doesn't seem to be financially successful so it isn't that either.

The media keeps producing these circuses because we demand them. If we stop watching and reading about them maybe then more missing children can receive the media attention they deserve. In reality that's nothing more than a pipe dream and the media will continue business as usual.

More information on the Giovanni Gonzalez story can be found here.

by Trench Reynolds